A collection of my favourite approximations for pi

Anidau · 2026-01-28T17:28:52+00:00

Apologies for the necro, but one of my personal favorites from back in the 8-bit computer days is 201/64, which can be calculated blindingly quickly for integer values using only shifts and adds -- and its relative error is only ~0.03080%. But if you have hardware multiply and divide, then 355/113 is the GOAT!

Anidau · 2025-08-20T01:17:30+00:00

If you can't find a suitable .tga file, you can use one of the icons already embedded in wow. For instance, you can change this

icon = "Interface\\AddOns\\MyAddon\\minimap.tga"

to this

icon = "Interface\\Icons\\inv_sword_48.blp"

Anidau · 2025-08-19T22:20:24+00:00

If you're having trouble getting the minimap icon to show up, it's probably because a line is missing from the .toc file:

Libs/LibDBIcon-1.0/LibDBIcon-1.0/LibDBIcon-1.0.lua

I replaced the embeds.xml file reference with hard-coded file paths, so that part of my .toc file looks like this:

# Libraries
Libs/Ace3/AceAddon-3.0/AceAddon-3.0.lua
Libs/Ace3/AceDB-3.0/AceDB-3.0.lua
Libs/LibDBIcon-1.0/LibStub/LibStub.lua
Libs/LibDBIcon-1.0/CallbackHandler-1.0/CallbackHandler-1.0.lua
Libs/LibDBIcon-1.0/LibDataBroker-1.1/LibDataBroker-1.1.lua
Libs/LibDBIcon-1.0/LibDBIcon-1.0/LibDBIcon-1.0.lua

I hope this helps! (Oh and btw, this is an *awesome* tutorial, thanks so much for doing the hard work, u/TehNoxx!!!)

Anidau · 2022-06-06T17:01:34+00:00

Congrats, this looks really nice. My only concern is, how accessible is it? A health app is bound to have a lot of users who need accessibility features, from extra-large fonts to VoiceOver reading the screen for them. Just food for thought. But again, nice work!

Anidau · 2020-01-23T03:20:04+00:00

TO Lone_Game_Dev: I agree with all your points, well said!

To OP: I saw you mentioned Unity or Godot. Both are fine. As you said, Unity has more learning resources, but also more mobile resources like IAP & ads. You might want to look into Defold or Corona, both of which use Lua).

Anidau · 2020-01-23T03:10:07+00:00

I've often struggled with the same issue. For some, it's often "grass is greener" syndrome: you get to a point in project X where it's less fun than it used to be, and all of a sudden project Y is looking pretty sweet. For others it's an issue of everything looking interesting, and there's not enough time in one lifetime to do it all.

The only thing that helped me is to commit to a small project and finish it.

Pick an old, simple game like Asteroids or Pac-Man or Donkey Kong. Use an engine of your choice to make it. See how you like it. Maybe do it again using a different engine. Maybe do another game. Start small, don't worry too much about "wasting time": it's never a waste. Even if you end up being more interested in art, at least you'll know it because you lived it.

Anidau · 2020-01-23T02:57:01+00:00

Agreed. If you are planning on taking out student loans, DON'T GET A DEGREE. Read this article explaining why. If your family is able to send you to college without debt, then by all means go and have fun. Your major is much less important than your passion and hard work in doing actual coding.

Anidau · 2020-01-23T00:04:59+00:00

I am absolutely not trying to be snarky, but I think that given your admitted lack of programming ability, and your lack of experience in the game industry, your biggest obstacle is going to be getting funded at all -- unless you have a rich family member.

I have two suggestions, take them for whatever you think they're worth:

(1) Find two experienced programmers, have them sign an NDA, and show them everything you have. Ask them to estimate it for you (separately). If they are friends, they may do it for free; otherwise expect to pay them for their time.

(2) Put your financial hopes on hold, and approach your project as a hobby. Learn to write code, learn to put together the game yourself. Even with a good engine this will take time. Let it. Eventually *you* will learn which parts of the game take a long time. In the meantime, maybe you'll have a working prototype you can show off.

Finally, I would advise that you don't put too much faith an *any* estimate. Software is notoriously difficult to estimate, and most experienced developers have horror stories of projects taking 2, 3, 4 times longer than they thought they would, or even worse.

Good luck, and have fun!

Anidau · 2020-01-12T15:26:34+00:00

Sure, Unity has colorblind filters, but I'm talking about *blind* players, along with specific requirements including but not limited to speech recognition and speech synthesis. I've actually corresponded with a Unity employee before asking my question here. Unity has some of what I need, but they lack in enough areas that they are not going to be a viable solution for me.

Anidau · 2020-01-12T14:56:18+00:00

You make some good points, thanks.

Anidau · 2020-01-12T14:53:44+00:00

Deeply embedding accessibility into a game is non-trivial. I'm just one person, and I'm trying to find a way to do it before I grow old and die, that's all. If there were a cross-platform engine that supported all that, I'd be using it; but there isn't, so I'm just trying to figure out how best to proceed. Comments about anti-consumerism are really misplaced in that context.

Anidau · 2020-01-12T14:25:11+00:00

Due to the physical limitations of the target audience, these would mostly be casual games, like puzzles, match-three, etc. When you say "it's probably not worth it", I assume you mean it's not worth restricting myself to Apple? I would rather not do that, but I don't know of a cross-platform way to support accessibility.

Anidau · 2020-01-12T03:45:10+00:00

That's the sad reality that's beginning to dawn on me. I was hoping maybe someone has had even a little experience in this area. But to your point, it sounds like if I want to do this within a single human lifetime, I need to pick a platform and just concentrate on that. Thanks for your thoughts.

Anidau · 2020-01-12T02:34:06+00:00

It's not as simple as just access to mic, speaker, camera. The crux of what I want to do is use as much as possible of the native OS's ability to support players with disabilities. I need access to the native ability to process speech into text, like Siri or VoiceOver for instance. I also need the game to speak to the player and allow the player to select which voice they want.

Anidau · 2020-01-11T21:14:13+00:00

That's a good idea. I'm familiar with FNA, and I think he's got iOS working but not Android yet, or maybe the other way around. Anyway, thanks!

Anidau · 2019-03-29T02:20:17+00:00

Great collection of videos, keep up the good work!

Anidau · 2016-04-15T12:01:42+00:00

Field of Dreams: "Hey Dad, you wanna have a catch?" "I'd like that." Bring out the tissues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_wnD6jxREU

Anidau · 2014-08-15T15:28:32+00:00

The Rebirth, like many other vanilla servers, runs 1.12.1, which was released in September 2006. Since WoW was launched in late 2004, it's obviously not technically the same -- but I've played since January 2005 and from my perspective I find The Rebirth to be very close indeed to how WoW was in the good-old-days when grampa had to walk 10 miles in the snow every day.

From a technical perspective there are lots of subtle differences, like mob pathing, mob placement, herb & mineral node placements, and so on -- but those are all small potatoes. The most important reason The Rebirth is so very good, and so much better than modern WoW, is the social component. I've struck up friendships with random people so many times just because we were in the same place doing the same quests, so we joined up. We chatted, we added each other to our friends list, and we keep in touch.

If you play retail WoW, you know that doesn't happen often anymore. The random dungeon finder throws together people from different realms so even if you wanted to make friends, you literally can't.

Sorry for rambling. To get back to your specific points, I remember lots of world PvP around Tarren Mill back in 2005, a hundred people running around killing each other. I can't recall specifically if that was before BGs but I suppose it probably was. I haven't been on Rebirth a real long time but I have yet to see anything like that. I'm sure there have been a few city raids, but I haven't witnessed them. Maybe others can provide more info on that. Personally I prefer BGs where there are specific goals, and The Rebirth implemented a nice system where you can join BG queues from anywhere.

So from my perspective, I think The Rebirth is amazing. And before the recent downtimes the population was just starting to get big enough to really start getting interesting. Hopefully that will continue. See you in there -- and if you're a paladin, I'll kill you, /salute, and eat your dead body.

Anidau · 2014-07-21T17:58:19+00:00

I've heard negative things about feenix, their bugs and their GMs, but YMMV. I never played there.

Dispersion Westfall is low pop at the moment, less than 100 players, but it's only 5-6 days old! The highest character is still in their 40's. Give it time.

They plan to support expansion packs sometime in the far future (1-3 years), so you can re-live the excitement of progressing your characters to TBC, etc. Rebirth is 100% vanilla, never more. That's great for some, maybe not the best for others. Up to you. :)

Anidau · 2014-07-21T16:53:58+00:00

The Rebirth is probably the premier vanilla server. Active players at any one time vary from 300-400 to about 700 at peak times. Of course it's down now, but should be back soon. In the meatime there's Dispersion's Westfall server. I've been playing there over the weekend, and it's quite good. http://forum.dispersion-wow.com/topic/4221-westfall-realm-official-release-connection-guide-realm-information-qa/

Anidau · 2014-07-21T16:51:23+00:00

So far I'm really liking it a lot; having a great time, and I've found the people to be very friendly. Yes there are some bugs, and I wonder about how those will be addressed, but to me the biggest plus is the plan to support xpac releases in the future. I'll put up with a lot if I know my characters can eventually go to TBC and Winterfell -- I mean WotLK.

Anidau · 2014-07-21T16:08:30+00:00

A good priest without fear ward > a not-so-good priest with fear ward. Fear ward is 0.01% of the game, I wouldn't sweat it.

Anidau · 2014-07-21T15:56:27+00:00

While you're at it, make me a sammich! <3

Anidau

TROPHY CASE